September Newsletter 2024
First, we urgently need parent volunteers for our upcoming off-season games, Capital City Classic. We are currently on the waiting list, but if we get into the off-season competition, October 25-27, we would have to limit the number of students that can go due to insufficient parent volunteers. To drive students, you need to be a Level Three Volunteer; I would highly recommend starting the application process now, as the process takes around a month to complete. To start, register with the team at Carlmont Robotics Volunteer Form. We’ll email you back and tell you to fill out the District’s online volunteer application. Get the email from the District that will ask you to get your Live Scan fingerprinting, and go complete that. Again, the District will take 1-3 weeks to clear you as a Level 3 Volunteer. Additionally just being a Level Two Volunteer would also be helpful for supervising the students during work sessions. The team would be ever so grateful if you could pitch in some time and transport the students so everyone can participate in this and future competitions. Your support is invaluable, and we genuinely appreciate your willingness to help.
Now that’s out of the way onto what we’ve been doing. We recently had the Clubs Fair, a way for the students to explore and learn more about the various clubs within the Carlmont School. The team had a booth and did a robot demonstration where we showed off our robot from last year. Students from outside the club shoot rings and drive the robot around on a mini field. Many of our members helped promote and hand out team pins to students. Keep in mind, we will have new merchandise every year, so look out for new merchandise in the future. Within work session hours, our veterans are busy training rookies. We are finishing the basics and moving on to more complex aspects within each subteam. Outside of training, we disassembled our robot from the 2023 competition. We do this for various reasons, mainly to recycle the materials so we can reuse the motors and such for future bots.
We are slowly transitioning our team and coordinating team leaders for our upcoming rookie competition, MA, which takes place on November 23. MA is the Menlo Atherton High School, and this is our third year participating in their rookie competition that simulates the actual competition build and design process on a smaller level. This is mainly for new team members to learn about the process and give veteran members more experience leading. In preparation, we are having fabrication rookies build the robot’s drive train, wheel, and base part. We will form and assign rookie teams sometime within the next week or two. We are excited about these developments and look forward to sharing more with you.
Photos from September 2024:
